1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a translating apparatus for translating between different languages.
2. Related Background Art
As translating methods which are executed in conventional translating apparatuses, translating methods of the direct type, the transfer type, and the pivot type are known.
In translating apparatuses direct type, for a word of a source language to be translated, a word of a target language having the same meaning as that of the source language word is stored in a memory in a form of a dictionary. Upon translation, with respect to each word of a source language sentence to be translated, the word which coincides with such a word is searched for from the headers of the dictionary. The translation word in the target language is extracted from the content corresponding to the coincident header. After that, processes such as replacement of the word order, inflection (change in word form), and the like are executed as necessary with respect to the translation words obtained as mentioned above in accordance with the grammar of the target language, thereby completing a translation sentence.
On the other hand, in the transfer type translation apparatus, a method whereby the words of different languages are directly made to correspond as in the direct type apparatus is not used; rather a sentence of the source language is grammatically analyzed, the result of the analysis (grammatical construction expression) is converted into a grammatical construction expression of the target language, and further, a sentence of the target language is generated from the grammatical construction expression.
In the pivot type translation apparatus, an intermediate expression which is independent of the language characteristics is used in place of the grammatical construction expression of the transfer type and a sentence of the target language is generated from the intermediate expression in which the source language sentence has been converted.
As such a translating apparatus, not only an apparatus in which the source language and the target language have been predetermined but also an apparatus which can mutually translate between two languages and an apparatus in which a source language and a target language can be arbitrarily selected among three or more languages are put into practical use.
In the translating process, the sentence of the source language and the sentence of the target language do not always correspond to each other in a one-to-one correspondence relation. Therefore, whether the determined translation word or translation sentence is correct or which one of a plurality of candidates of the translation words or translation sentences should be selected becomes a problem.
In such a situation, particularly, in the case where the user of the apparatus is fluent in the source language rather than the target language, it is one of the effective methods that the result of the translation is again translated into the source language and a judgment is performed from the result of the retranslation.
In the apparatus which can cope with multiple languages, the user may want to further translate the generated translation words or translation sentences into those of another language. In such an apparatus which can cope with multiple languages, when both the source language and the target language are not the mother language of the user, the user may desire to know the meaning of an expression by further translating the result of the translation into the mother language of the user.
In the conventional translating apparatus, however, where the user wants to further translate a certain result of the translation, the same words or sentences as those of the translation result must be newly inputted as a source language sentence of the translating apparatus and the operating procedure is cumbersome.